The Short Happy Life of Wallace West
by TakeThemByStorm
Summary: A Failsafe AU. Wally was trapped in the simulation for three years. And then he, with the others, woke up to a world now completely alien to him.
1. Survivor

**Author's Note:**

**This is the first chapter of what I hope soon balloons into an enormous epic, and yes I realize that is farfetched but let a guy dream. I would like to extend my utmost thanks to fellow fanfic writer mahlia, without whose help this would be far, far worse. And, well, that's it! Read, enjoy, and tell me how I might improve this.**

M'gann had been the first to die.

"It should've been you," he remembers hissing, screaming, shouting, cursing, again and again, at the girl he'd saved instead. Artemis never does anything but stand there, taking the abuse silently. One night, it's too much for her, and she vanishes.

Kaldur had been next to disappear in the screaming heat of a disintegrator beam. He'd shoved Wally to the side, the look in his eyes burned into Wally's brain for the rest of his life.

Of course he'd had to die content, the bastard.

The remaining three of them manage well for a few months. Dick learns to fly M'gann's bio-ship with some proficiency and Conner and Wally salvage one of the disintegrators from a downed but still-intact alien ship. They live on hope for those months as Wally and Dick pore over the technology, taking every last scrap of it apart in their desperation to find something that could be used to their advantage, all while men and women and children burn outside their sanctuary. They hope that the discovery they'd made, that zeta radiation could be detected coming off of the beam, means what they wanted it to.

Oh, how naïve of them.

"Yeah, it uses zeta tech," Wally tells them one evening. "It uses it to tear its victims apart on a subatomic level and scatter their remains all over the place."

The PDA slips from his hands, smashing against the floor, and he walks off.

Conner abandons them soon afterwards. The major telecommunications networks all went down shortly after the initial assault, so there's not a shred of definitive information save for some rumors, and they just know the clone is gone.

After that it's just him and Dick. They do what they can—blow up a scout here, rescue survivors there. But at this point they're fighting a losing war, merely stalling the inevitable. At some level, behind the smiles and what little encouragement they can offer, they realize this. Maybe it's why they keep moving, moving by months across the continental United States, never looking back.

Dick dies when a tank round, fired by a panicked half-trained recruit thinking that they are bandits, hits the car they're using as cover. Wally drags them both away, but he's too late to keep a cloud of fragmentation from tearing into Dick's leg and severing the femoral artery. He cradles his best friend in his arms as he bleeds out, pressure bandages and makeshift tourniquets doing nothing to staunch the bleeding.

"Oh God," the soldier says as he runs up. "Is he okay? Is he okay?"

Wally stands, lifting his friend in his arms, and disappears. He buries him later that night in the middle of a forest, raising a cairn in lieu of a gravestone. He later brings the bio-ship over, cloaking it and setting it down.

He just gives up after that. His yellow-red uniform goes into an old scavenged backpack, replaced with odds and ends that he finds. He keeps away from any major concentrations of people, and the one time that he does pop into one, he is only in long enough to snag a new canteen, his old one having broken beyond repair in a brief tussle with a grizzly bear somewhere in the Rockies.

It is exactly one year after M'gann's death that he finds Artemis again, just outside of the settlement he's vacated. Or more specifically, she finds him.

A weight crashes down on his shoulders just as he's about to sprint off into the night. Combat training long-forgotten kicks in, and he rolls with the blow, throwing whoever it is off his back. He makes to run off again, but his attacker is there, an intercepting fist slamming into his face. Whoever this is, she—and she is most definitely a she, he can tell that much even with her heavy cloak whipping around—she knows enough about how to fight speedsters that she presses the advantage, striking quickly, keeping him on his heels, never letting him use his speed for a moment.

It ends when she sweeps his legs out from under him and pounces, holding a knife to his throat.

He knows that move. He's been humiliated with it more times than he cares to remember, but it can't be her, it just can't. One look at her face beneath her ragged hood and at those familiar dark eyes, a strand of golden hair coated with grime and muck dangling down across her forehead and he knows it's her.

"I'm sorry," he croaks out, trembling. "I'm so sorry."

Artemis says nothing as she cracks him across the temple and everything goes black.

When he wakes up, the noon sun is beating down on the world, and he is tied to a tree. Artemis is half-asleep, leaning against her own tree, her knife resting unsheathed on her thigh, ready to be picked up at a moment's notice.

He shifts, and her eyes shoot open.

"Wally," she says, her voice even and flat. "Where are the others?"

"Dead," he hears himself say.

"How?"

"Kaldur got zapped, Conner ran off, Rob bled out." He trembles a little at the memories, but keeps himself under control.

"And how did you survive?"

He laughs a harsh, croaking laugh. "How do you think?"

She purses her lips and pulls a whetstone from a pouch, sliding her blade across it with a quiet whisk, whisk, whisk. "Never thought that you of all people would stoop to crime," she says after a while. "That canteen belonged to someone, you know."

"I know," he says. "And what the hell's the point? The world's fallen. The world fell a long, long time ago. We're just waiting for the executioner's axe."

She says nothing in response, merely standing and walking off. Wally sighs, slumping against the trunk, and gets to working himself loose.

He's only managed to give himself maybe a centimeter's worth of slack when Artemis returns, a fat pair of rabbits in her hand.

"You've lost your touch, Baywatch," she says, setting them down and walking over to cut him loose. Wally just stares at her as she begins to skin them. "Well? Can you go get some kindling and fuel, or is that too mentally taxing for you, Kid Idiot?"

He gets up and speeds off, returning a minute later with a pile of small twigs cradled in his arms. He dumps it and sets to clearing an area, arranging stones and lighting the kindling with a moment's work.

"Thanks," Artemis says. She digs around in her pack—where had that been a moment before?—and pulls out a small cast-iron pot. "Stream's that way. Can you go fill this?"

She blinks and Wally is back, the pot sloshing full. "Why are you doing this?" he asks, handing it over.

"Doing what?"

"This whole—everything," he says. "You keep using those jokesy-cutesy nicknames that we used to use, and you're not even yelling at me. Why? Last I remember, I was blaming you for M'gann's death."

Artemis shrugs. "You were upset," she says. "This is you, Wally, you can't hate anyone. You even stopped hating me after a while."

"Do you really believe that?"

"I have to," she says. "Because in case you haven't noticed, we're the only ones left, Wally. You and me, the last remnants of the Justice League."

"Fat lot of good that's going to do," he snorts. "A speedster who couldn't save his own friends and an archer without arrows."

"I still have some," she says.

"Are any of your trick arrows left? Y'know, the ones that might actually prove useful against those alien attack craft?"

"Unfortunately, no."

"In other words, no useful arrows. Fantastic."

Artemis dumps both rabbits into the pot, and takes it from Wally. She places it next to the fire, stands, and knees him in the groin. "Okay," she says. "I've been remarkably patient with you up until this point, but you need to get over yourself. Yes, everyone you've ever cared about is dead, I'm in the same boat here. Or do you think that you guys weren't family to me? We are the only two people left on the face of the planet who are capable of doing anything, Wally, so get your shit together and help me."

Wally recovers, his hands on his knees, his breath coming in short pants. He glares up at her. "Fine," he growls out. "But you'd better have a plan."

She smirks. "Oh, yes."

Her plan is a bit fantastic, in the sense of "you honestly think that this is going to work" fantastic, not "gee-golly-willikers, this is fantastic!" fantastic. But for the first year, it works well. The few villains that hadn't been killed in the initial invasion were now warlords of vast hidden empires. So they go in, bring in Artemis as a plant, and then when the time is right several weeks later, spring her and all the supplies—mostly what little high explosives there are in the armories—they need and flee. They spend another couple months lying low in the wilderness, then rinse and repeat.

It's only when they attempt this with Vandal Savage over in what used to be Tibet that things go very, very wrong.

"Stay with me Arty, stay with me!" Wally shouts as he cradles her in his arms, dodging bullets. "Oh shit oh shit oh shit."

"Don't call me Arty," she slurs, her hand pressed weakly over the wound in her side. Her skin is steadily taking on an ashen hue as blood drips away in a crimson trail behind them. Her head lolls against his bare arm, and he shivers a little at how cold she feels.

"Is that really that important right now?" he hisses. "Actually, it probably is. Just keep talking to me, Artemis, keep talking."

"Take a left here," she says. "Kick open the door and take the staircase up." He obeys, finding himself on a high tower.

"This is a dead end," he says, hearing the angry shouts getting closer.

"Y'can run down the wall, can't you?" she says.

"Do you want me to aggravate that gaping hole in your side?" he says as he speeds back down. "I'm not losing you, Arty."

"Stop callin' me that," comes her reply. "You wan' the long way out, take the next right and keep taking rights."

"Thank you," he says, kicking his speed up a notch. "Now keep conscious."

"M'dad's Sportsmaster," she says suddenly.

"That's nice," he says. "Why are you telling me this?"

She shrugs. "If'm gonna croak I might as well be honest with you," she says.

"You're not going to die on me," Wally says. "Tell me more about your family."

"M'sister's Cheshire."

"The League of Shadows assassin with the smiley-cat-mask thing?"

"Y'huh. M'mom's Huntress."

"Who?"

"Used t'work for the Shadows, retired."

"Is everyone in your family except you assassins, Arty?"

"Mmmm-hmm. Don' call me that."

"I'll call you what I want, Arty," he says, zipping around a corner only to come face-to-face with a squad of Savage's armed henchmen. He runs up the wall and across the ceiling, bullets whistling past him and missing. A second later, they're well out of range. "Tell me more about yourself."

"Like wuh?"

"Your favorite book, I don't know, just keep talking to me," he says. "Why the hell does this place need to be so labyrinthine?"

"Alice in Wonderlan'," Artemis mumbles.

"What?"

"Alice in Wonderlan'," she repeats. "Favorite book."

"Okay, that's great, that's great, now where the hell did I park the bio-ship," he mutters, glancing around him.

"Tol' you to put it dow' over in the cour'yard."

"Well, yes, but there was an antiaircraft cannon in the courtyard, so I parked it over—ah!" He runs over to the hole in the air and up the invisible ramp. In five minutes the pair are out of harm's way.

"Okay, med-bay, med-bay, think med-bay," Wally mutters to himself, focusing on growing a table beneath Artemis's limp form. "Stop the bleeding, need to bring up vital stats, c'mon girl, c'mon."

A screen pops up. "And lovely, she's gone into shock," he says, glancing over the statistics. Her blood pressure is dangerously low, her breath coming in short, sharp pants. He doesn't look at her body temperature, choosing instead to focus on memories of her body, warm against his as they curled up against the cold night.

"Blood type, blood type," he mutters, focusing on the typing process, willing the ship around him to replicate it. "C'mon, please be compatible."

"Wally?" Artemis says quietly. He is by her side in an instant.

"Yeah?"

"I don't hate you. I never really did."

"Okay, that's great," he says as he wills the ship to bring up the equipment he needs. "Keep talking to me, Artemis."

"Y'were always m'favorite superhero," she mumbles, "back when I was a kid. I really liked you. I really really like y'hair, too, an'y'freckles." She pauses momentarily as Wally brings up a console so he can continue his work. "I really like everythin' 'bout you, Wally."

"That's great, beautiful, keep talking to me," he says as a screen displaying Artemis's shredded insides pops up. He forces down the bile and focuses on suturing the torn veins—it's a miracle, frankly, that her arteries are intact. "This is going to hurt a bit, so just keep talking to me, all right?"

She winces, but complies as microscopic fibers work their way into her flesh. "I really, really like you Wally," she says again, softly.

"Then why all the hostility?" he says.

"Whuh?"

"Why did you always argue with me?"

"Couldn' help it," she mumbles. "Couldn' stand you flirting and hatin' me all the time."

"I don't hate you," he says, "I never hated you, where'd you get that idea?" He pauses and reconsiders. "Oh."

Artemis laughs. "Yeah, oh," she says. "Yer an idiot, Wally."

"No kidding. I manage to screw up everything, don't I?"

"Ayup." She giggles semi-hysterically and Wally winces at the noise. "But you nev' do it on purpose."

"Like hell I did," he says softly. There's a ping as the ship finishes processing Artemis's blood—it's not like there's a lack of it to process, the stuff is dripping all over the place. "Please be compatible, please be compatible yes! AB positive!"

"Wally? I'm cold, Wally," she whimpers.

"Don't worry, I'm going to fix that," he tells her, jabbing an IV line into her arm.

"Ow," she says, pouting.

He ties a tourniquet around his elbow, watching as his blood vessels protrude, before growing another line. He hesitates a moment before stabbing it into the ulnar artery. Screw it, he doesn't have the time, and he can handle it.

He watches as Artemis relaxes, color suffusing her face again as his lifeblood becomes hers.

She isn't going to die.

Hallelujah.

He lands in the Artic, burying the ship underneath the ruins of the Fortress of Solitude, and lets himself sleep.

Artemis resigns herself to being babied by Wally for the next month as she heals, whether it's him fussing over her slowly healing wounds every time the bio-ship hits turbulence as they change locations or him letting her sleep a little longer when she's supposed to relieve him during the night watch. But something has irrevocably changed about him. He's become quieter, more prone to letting himself drift off into long silences that he always needs to be woken from. He's twitchier around her, too, refusing to meet her gaze half the time.

She finally becomes fed up with his behavior when they begin planning their next big heist.

"Wally, for the last damn time, it's just going to a routine smash-and-grab," she growls. "And you don't know a thing about how to act around these guys."

"Like you're any better," Wally retorts. "Or have you forgotten how you nearly died the last time?"

"There were a hundred Shadow assassins there."

"And there won't be this time around?"

She purses her lips and crosses her arms and cocks a hip in that oh-so-damn familiar manner that means that the shouting is going to start and he winces preemptively. He's learned that, during the few arguments that they do have, she tends to win, mostly because she is very willing to use her knife to inflict bodily harm on him.

"Why are you so worried?" she says.

"What?"

"Why are you," she says more slowly, pointing at him, "so worried, about me?"

"You're the only one left," he attempts.

"Bull. We've been the only ones left for how long now? And just now you have a problem with me putting myself in mortal danger?"

"Well, you nearly dying might've had something to do with that."

"Bull. Your eye is twitching. You only ever do that when you're lying."

"Wait, it does?" He blanches. "Shit."

"Still fast with your feet and slow with your mouth." Artemis stalks closer. "Why can't you just tell me, Wally?" She almost seems hurt. "I thought we had enough trust between us for that."

Wally opts to keep his mouth very firmly shut.

"Wally," she pleads. "C'mon. If you're not going to do it for me then do it for us. Because you're screwing up the team dynamic here." His lips tighten as she keeps trying to lighten the mood. "You're not supposed to be the broody, secretive one with the dark, mysterious past, that's job. You're the loudmouth who can't keep from griping about me. So c'mon, gripe. Gripe away. What'd I do?"

"You told me that you cared," he snaps. "Happy? You told me that you cared for me."

She stiffens slightly before waving a careless hand. "Blood loss. I must've been delirious."

"Now who's lying?" Wally says. "You told me about your family, too. I somehow doubt that was you being delirious."

"Even if I wasn't," she challenges, "then what's the issue?"

"You can't," he says. "Y'know, care for me. You can't."

"Why not, you're the only other person in the world I can rely on—"

"Because everyone I have ever loved has died!" he screams at her. "And I can't lose you!"

Artemis stands there, stunned, as Wally runs off into the wilds around them.

The first thing she does when he comes back that night, dragging himself back into the firelight, is smack him. Her eyes are swollen and wet and her lower lip bleeding a little from where she's been chewing it. He's been expecting it, but even the expectation does nothing to dull the sting of her words as she shouts at him until her voice gives out.

The sex that night is hot and furious and animalistic, as Artemis relishes in the feel of Wally's hot skin against her own, as Wally kisses her again and again as reassurance that yes, this is really happening, as their shared climax speaks to them both, "I am here. I am here."

"Wally," she murmurs as the two bed down in the bio-ship for the night. Her free hand, curling up under his ribs, traces circles on his chest as she keeps her gaze fixed on the lines of his back.

"Hm?"

"Do you love me?"

What few people know about the suite of abilities that speedsters possess is that, when they aren't using their speed, their brains are still on overdrive, running twice as quickly as any normal, baseline human's. Normally this is mitigated by the fact that the increased processing power does nothing to help them focus, but that one question brings every last memory he has of them into sharp relief.

Even so, it takes him a minute to reply.

"Wally?" she asks again, wondering if he's gone to sleep. He wriggles around until he's facing her, and takes her hands—he's never realized how small and delicate they look, for all of the scars and calluses that cover them—in both of his own.

"I do," he says.

Artemis smiles at him and burrows her head into the hollow between his shoulder and his neck as his stomach flips and flops.

She leaves to insert herself into the operations of the local warlord the day after. Wally has never been more relieved to see her four weeks later, bloodied and dirty and filthy, running full-tilt from the compound with her backpack laden, a manic grin on her face.

But as the months pass and their stockpile grows and grows, they gain the attention of the alien invaders. It seems that at every turn now, they need to duck patrols, and once the bio-ship nearly gets shot out of the sky.

Wally groans as they go over their plan again.

"Too little intel, too little time, too few resources to draw on," he mumbles. "This is suicide."

"Then we die together," Artemis says, toying with his hair. "Isn't that what heroes do? Swoop in, sacrifice themselves for the fate of the world?"

"Either that or die like chumps."

"Well then," she says, kissing him lightly on the head. "Let's make sure that we go out with a bang, then."

The plan is elegant in its simplicity and brutish in everything else. The cloaked bio-ship charges through the cloud of alien ships surrounding the mothership, firing a volley of scattering shots before focusing every weapon it has forwards. The black and red hull holds and holds and holds before melting and burning away, giving them access to the hangar. Wally guides the ship in and sets it down, extending the ramp. Artemis grabs her backpack and slings it over her shoulders.

"Clear the way," she says, tossing him one of the energy weapons they'd filched from one of the LexCorp's top-security labs. "Remember—"

"Thirty shots per pack, need a tight grouping of three to be sure," Wally finishes, checking the fit on his makeshift bandolier. "Scanner's up and running?"

"Yup," she says, checking the display. "Be back here in two."

"Done and done. I'll be running interference."

"You go do that, Baywatch."

He smiles at her before vanishing, and soon the sound of weapons fire fills the air.

"Check, check, check," she mutters to herself as she surveys her arsenal. She places a hand on the ship's control orbs and activates a programmed response. Essentially, the ship is going to fire its weapons at anything larger than a rhino that approaches.

She runs out without a second glance.

"Get back here," she radios Wally as she takes down another walker. "You're too far out, get back before your escape route gets cut off."

He doesn't bother to acknowledge her. All she hears is another three-round burst over the radio before he's back behind her, panting lightly.

"Well," he remarks. "They're overextended thataway, beautiful. Shall we get moving?"

"Not until you start carrying your fair share," she says, giving him one of the packs filled with various flavors of high explosive.

"Sure thing, gorgeous," he says.

She rolls her eyes. "Less flirting, more fighting?"

"Aye aye—"

"Zip it."

It's a simple matter for them to follow the corridors in the rough direction of the largest energy signature on the scanner, the thing pulsating every so often like some sort of tumorous organ, blood washing through the vessels that permeate it.

"Whoa," is their immediate reaction when they actually reach the chamber.

"Well, it's shiny," Wally remarks.

"See if you can snag the grappling hook on something over there, I'll keep you covered."

"Got it, beautiful."

"What did I tell you about flirting?" she says, only to hear a whirr, a whoosh, and a metallic clank. She sighs and focuses on putting as much fire down the corridor as possible. She hardly needs to aim, given how densely packed the alien walkers are.

She hears Wally curse, and looks back to see him clinging desperately to the edge of part of the superstructure surrounding the central core.

"Gravity shifts!" he shouts. "Keep firing, I can set everything up and get out!"

She turns her attention back to the corridor just in time to see one of a walker's long mechanical legs swooping down to crush her. She rolls to the side and destroys it with a quick burst into its underbelly, but she needs space and cover, neither of which is immediately available given that she's maybe a meter away from a very long fall.

She snatches up a spare power pack and makes the jump. She falls for a sickening moment before the gravity shifts and she's plummeting towards the core.

"Wally!" she screams. He looks up, eyes widening, and catches her, collapsing a bit under the strain. "We have a bit of a situation here," she says, firing upwards at the walkers, which are following her.

"No, really," Wally says. "I'm moving under cover, just keep them offa me for a moment."

She pauses momentarily as a dozen walkers clank down around them and begin advancing.

"Don't bother with the timer," she says. "We're trapped in here."

"Like hell we are," he says.

Of course, her rifle needs to take that moment to spark and sputter, and she barely manages to toss it away before it explodes from the overheating. She hisses as fragments of the weapon pepper her flesh.

"Give me your gun," she shouts, and Wally kicks the thing back over to her as he fiddles with the detonator, feverishly checking and double-checking the connections.

"This isn't working!" he says. "Work, you piece of junk, work—"

"Spare in my pack!" Artemis says. "Hurry up!"

"You can either get fast and imprecise or slow and careful, beautiful," Wally says.

"Just hurry up, damn it!"

"Aha!" he proclaims a second later. "And we have green for let's go and get the hell out!"

Of course one of the walkers at that moment decides to swing its leg into him, crushing his ribs and hurling him away. A curiously painless warmth blooms in his chest as he coughs up blood. His lung's been punctured.

"Oh," he manages.

Artemis curses and glances over at him. They have an entire silent conversation in that moment.

"I'm sorry for doing this," she says.

"For doing what?" he replies.

"This."

Artemis shoots him one final backward glance and a half-smile before she dives for the detonator and jams her fist down on the button.

There is enough explosive there to completely vaporize her, and the concussive wave hurls him, skidding and thumping and rolling, even further back. At this point, he doesn't really care. Numbness has spread through him, and it takes all of his strength for him to roll onto his back. He waits for a heartbeat, then another. Nothing happens.

So they've failed.

Well, at least they tried.

He stares up at the walker that has clanked over and raised its leg to crush him and smiles at it. He has to fight down the urge to laugh and laugh and laugh, because really, what kind of sick fuck does that when every last friend he has ever had is now dead and gone, when his lover has just committed suicide to save the world and failed utterly at it?

The leg comes down with a crackling crunch, the sound of his sternum and then his spine giving way beneath the overwhelming force. A bare whisper of breath escapes.

In the millisecond before he dies, Wally feels the core at his back grow suddenly, catastrophically hot. He would've laughed then, if his diaphragm hadn't been pulverized.

So they didn't lose after all.

Darkness takes him.


	2. Dream

**Author's Note:  
**

**Hey, all. First order of business, many thanks to my beta, mahlia, who is most of the reason this fanfic is good as it is. Second order of business, it looks as though about one update a month is going to be as fast as I can put to paper new chapters, given everything. So apologies for the wait, thanks for the patience, and I'll let you get to reading now.**

It seems to them that they float in an endless void. Fragments of memory occasionally pop in, but are gone and forgotten an instant later.

It's really hard to concentrate on any one thing when they seem to be a part of everything. One of them notes that it's going to be hard, describing this to everyone if they get back. Someone else asks what "this" he's referring to. The reply is simply, "Nirvana."

At least they can figure out gender, now. That's an improvement.

After a while they graduate to individuals. For the life of them—heh, that's worth a laugh—they can't figure out who they are, or even what they are, but there is a distinct sense that they are different.

There is an amorphous mass, green and white and every color in between, one moment something, the next another, the only constant a sense of joy and wonder and innocence that emanates from—her. They're fairly sure that she's a her.

There is a symbol next, an abstraction, an inverted trident with the haft removed, leaving only the two prongs pointed down. A spearhead. It is sturdy and strong, unbreakable, its surface polished to a mirror finish.

There is a shield, its surface battered and scratched and blank save for the hint of an outline along its edge. It's a simple, pentagonal thing, painted in blacks and reds, its edge sharpened and hardened.

There is the outline of a pair of wings, skeletal and sketched out. They are beating ceaselessly against an invisible wind, the joints crackling with every sweep. They are otherwise silent.

There is an arrow, the shaft splintered and snapped. The fletching is torn and dirty, but the barbed arrowhead is still keen, the metal spotless and rust-free.

There is a lightning bolt, caged plasma in a bottle, bright and flaring and burning.

Out of these forms resolve two girls, four boys.

And then their minds splinter.

_M'gann is nervous. She has a right to be. They're teenagers prosecuting a war, and without the benefit of the League heavy hitters being there to back them up if anything goes wrong, mostly because they're all dead._

_But in theory it's simple enough. Go in, take out the enemy ships in a surprise attack, blowing them out of the sky before either of them can react, pry off the cannon and skedaddle. The cloaking on the bio-ship should keep them from being discovered, and their mountain base is a decent enough fortress. Simple. Simple._

_Maybe if she keeps telling herself that she'll actually believe it._

_It comes as a bit of a surprise when the mission actually goes off as easily as planned. Bang bang, the two ships are down, and though one explodes on impact with the Arctic ice, the other lands and skids, completely disabled but otherwise intact. They're taking no chances, though, and M'gann tears the thing to pieces as soon as they hop out of the bio-ship._

_Unfortunately, as they finish integrating the cannon, a third ship soars in, blasting at them. The shot hits the cannon, thankfully not vaporizing any of them, but the explosion hurls them in all directions, stunning those that aren't immediately knocked out by the blast. M'gann takes the worst of it, as the sudden searing heat of the explosion and the mental screech of pain from the bio-ship both shatter her focus, leaving her reeling._

_Thankfully—and oh, how it just burns within her for thinking that—the ship dives and fires, not at her, but at Artemis instead, who is forcing herself back to her feet, struggling through the knee-deep snow. At the last moment, a blur slams into the blonde, tackling her to the side, and Wally and Artemis both roll off as the ship strafes at them, death averted for a few more precious seconds._

_The ship swoops and dives again as M'gann joins the others in making for the cover of the bio-ship, and this time they're too late to save her. The beam hits her head-on, and her world becomes pain as her skin blisters and crisps in microseconds. She desperately throws up a telekinetic shield, but it collapses, and she drops her disguise as the beam burns through to muscle and then to bone and by the pantheon why does it hurt so much?_

_The agony goes on and on and on and on and on and on and a part of her mind thinks that it's not real, it can't be real, until the beam torches her nervous system, and she dies._

There is the distinct sensation of someone pulling at the back of their minds, and the pain becomes sharper and sharper.

_Kaldur leads the team minus one back in silence._

_No one is really blaming Wally, but he can tell from the way that the speedster cradles his head in his hands that he certainly is. Mostly, everyone just seems to be in varying stages of shock, especially Robin, who's gone so far as to not notice that his mask is half-off, his identity revealed for all to see. It's not as though anyone actually cares, though._

_Kaldur pushes the guilt aside and focuses on keeping the bio-ship straight and level as they fly back home. He's still their leader, which means he needs to be the pillar of strength here. He needs to set the example that though their friend is dead, they have a greater duty to the people of Earth which must be fulfilled first._

_It was the one of the first things they had taught back in basic training. There were your personal feelings, and there was your fealty to Atlantis and your duty to your countrymen. In the event any of them conflicted, the last two took precedence._

_He was a soldier, carrying out his duty to the world._

_Maybe he can stay sane if he keeps repeating that mantra._

_He gets them to concentrate on working out a plan, and it does help them somewhat to focus on the very real facts that they are the last recognizable remnants of the Justice League, and so are not only the last best chance for any armed resistance to succeed, but also a beacon of hope for any other resistance groups around the world. They send their message of solidarity the next day, after they've had a chance to clean up and change into fresh uniforms. They take turns standing before the cameras, their message translated into a hundred different languages, all steely determination and confidence._

_Robin is the only one who speaks the thought on everyone's mind__ later__, breaking the silence that he's maintained up until now. "We trying to convince them or ourselves?" he says, before vanishing to who-knows-where._

_Despite his best efforts to distract them, the team begins to deteriorate a few days later. Wally is the first to snap, one morning just storming in and screaming at Artemis until she tears up and leaves. Kaldur slams him up against the wall when he makes to follow, and tells him in no uncertain terms that such behavior will not be tolerated. He never again sees Wally laying into Artemis like that, but when she up and vanishes a couple days later, he suspects the redhead was simply doing so out of sight._

_After that, things simply fall apart. The first few forays they make out of the mountain are moderately successful in raising morale, but what little cohesion they have starts to crumble on the fourth skirmish and by the eighth they've abandoned all pretense of being a team. Their appearance still raises the same cheers, but they've reverted back to fighting individually with any orders he gives being treated as cursory suggestions at best. Situations they used to laugh at become life-and-death battles simply because it's that much easier for their enemies to isolate and overwhelm them._

_The whole matter comes to a head just off the Florida Keys, as they're escorting a group of sailors off to the safe zone they've established. Kid Flash is busy whipping up a waterspout, catching the odd low-flying ship and hurling it aside. Superboy is on the offensive in the bio-ship, firing wildly. Kaldur notes that one of them really does need to learn how to pilot the ship more effectively. He and Robin are at least working together, no matter how silent and withdrawn the boy has become, to lead the column of soldiers away._

_A blast nearly hits Kid Flash, but the explosion of steam is either enough to hurl him away or trips him up enough that he skips away over the water, skidding to a stop on the beach. Aqualad runs to help him as the ships retarget and take aim at the bio-ship. None of the shots actually connect, of course; Superboy's inexpert flying actually proves a benefit for once as he dips and dives and soars erratically. It doesn't stop one ship from breaking off and strafing the column and Robin spends one of his last explosive batarangs to bring it down._

_The destruction just attracts more ships. Aqualad tries to ignore the screams of the dying and focuses on dragging the half-conscious Kid Flash out of the way._

_Then there's the familiar diving screech that indicates that one of the ships is strafing them, and Robin's panicked shout makes him turn. Kaldur has a bare second to act before the disintegrator beam hits them, and he moves on instinct, shoving Kid Flash to the side._

_It is curiously painless when he dies, as the ravening beam burns through his skin and muscle and bone, until there is nothing left of Kaldur'ahm in the world._

Their minds shatter, splintering and splintering and splintering, trying to hold together as they are inexorably dragged away, tearing and scraping and burning, identities torn away and subsumed into unconsciousness, memories and perspectives completely alien to them forced into consciousness, threatening to scratch and claw and bite away at what sanity they have left.

_Robin becomes the leader by default after Kaldur's death. Conner doesn't exactly care, given that there's three of them and what major pockets of resistance are left—three or four bunkered down in the Alps, a half-dozen Chinese regiments being picked off in the Himalayas, one in the Rocky Mountains, three scattered along the Appalachians, two along the Andes, although they'd lost contact with one of them—have made exactly zero headway. Worse still, their supplies are running out, morale is low, and the alien ships are seemingly endless. They don't have the manpower to make an assault on the mothership, squatting on the remains of Smallville, either._

_So, seemingly hopeless._

_Conner doesn't really mind, though, which irritates Wally to no end. Half of their arguments now center on how blasé he seems about the whole thing, how he doesn't even seem to care that their friends, his family, are dead. It's a miracle that the two never come to blows._

_Robin's out of the cave a lot, which doesn't really bother either of them. They prefer their solitude these days, and Robin is a master of stealth to a frankly ridiculous degree. No one sees or hears him unless he wants to be seen or heard. In fact, the only reason that they realize that he's gone at all is that the bio-ship is missing from the hangar some days._

_It makes it a little surreal when the Boy Wonder staggers in one morning after one of his evening walks, babbling excitedly about scanners and zeta radiation._

_After they get him to calm down, he explains. He'd been scanning around the ruins of the Hall of Justice for salvageable electronics, and found the distinct signature of zeta radiation, bleeding off of bits of the rubble nowhere near the zeta tube. He'd double-checked his hunch on a few blown-up tanks and on an alien ship he'd baited down and everything had checked out. All they needed was to salvage another disintegrator cannon and take it apart to confirm the hunch—a point he makes rather strenuously when Wally wants to run off and mount a rescue mission immediately—and if possible develop a defense against the beams. Wally only relents when Robin points out that they need a definitive answer as to where the prisoners are being transported to before they can mount a rescue mission._

_Conner thinks he sees a strain in Robin's wide grin, but dismisses it._

_They spend a week actually planning their little raid before executing it. Given their track record, it's surprising they are as successful as they are. The enemy ships go down, Superboy drags one under cover and they dismantle it and attach the cannon to the bio-ship, then cloak and disappear into the night. They fill the spaces in the ship with whatever other tech they can tear from the ship. There's so much salvage that it actually slows the ship down a little._

_Conner relegates himself to keeping up the raids and raising morale in the various ragtag resistance movements around the world. His appearance raises the usual cheers and brings the usual hope. Truth be told, he rather likes the attention. And throughout the days and weeks, as Robin and Wally slave feverishly over the alien tech, there is one thought that sustains him. His family is out there, and they will be coming for them._

_When Wally walks in one day and declares that everyone they've ever known and loved is irrevocably gone, he doesn't quite know what to do with himself, as the façade Robin's been keeping up collapses. He ends up pulling a Wally and runs. After all, someone needs to keep up the good fight, and neither of them seem capable of acting, given the way they mope around for the week after Wally's pronouncement._

_In retrospect, he probably should've brought them along, if only for the backup._

_He drops the bio-ship into a clumsy dive, then pulls up a bare millisecond before he smashes into the ground. The alien craft on his tail follows effortlessly and he curses as a shot nearly catches him. Yeah, Robin's piloting prowess would really be appreciated right now, as well as an explanation as to when and how the blasted ships on his tail got so damn agile._

_It's a real shame that he's here to demonstrate his presence, otherwise he could be cloaked and much, much safer right now._

_One of the bio-ship's wings clips a streetlamp and he tumbles through the decaying ruins of a skyscraper before straightening out and pulling up. He doesn't manage to pull up high enough or fast enough, as he promptly smashes through another and another. Superboy curses the tightly-packed high-rises of Metropolis as he dodges a third and shoots down another alien ship that goes spiraling down, smashing and rolling in the streets before an internal detonation tears it to pieces._

_Superboy grins, just as a particularly large fragment of the downed ship comes whizzing and whirling up, tearing a chunk out of the bio-ship—to put it lightly, rendering it aerodynamically infeasible. He's the one to spiral down now, barely managing to avoid hitting a small group of civilians taking cover behind a vandalized shop front._

_He grunts as the bio-ship crashes into another building, burying it under rubble. A piece of rebar rams its way through the roof, bending against his skin, and the entire thing groans under the weight. Conner scrambles out before he's entombed completely. He really doesn't care to test the limits of his strength right now._

_Another alien ship, then another and another scream past him, orbiting the crash location. A fourth and a fifth join in, then a sixth, then a seventh. It's only a matter of time before they begin bombarding the place until everything in the block is atomized._

_Superboy leaps out and dies._

Oh god oh god the pain and pain and pain and pain and pain and pain and pain and pain and pain and pain why won't it stop the pain make it stop stop stopstop stopstopstopstopstopstopstop.

The pressure on their minds lessens slightly, and they withdraw into themselves, clutching to who they are, what they are, just in time for the intrusion to return, yanking and pulling and dragging at them.

Reality shatters around them.

_If there is any one thing that Richard "Dick" Grayson can be said to be a master of, it is deception. He's learned the art of modulating his voice so that he sounds like he's right next to you, or over that-a-way, or everywhere at once. He can disappear into the shadows and reappear anywhere so quickly most people think capable of teleporting. He's become so adept at leading his double life over the years, he can switch between the talkative, absolutely brilliant with most computers and technology and the complete troll that is Robin and the more reserved, more dignified, good-with-math-but-rubbish-at-coding, still-a-bit-of-a-troll, no-one's-perfect civilian—at a moment's notice._

_The key to the best deceptions, he theorizes, is to let the target come up with as many of the fine details as possible. Just vaguely provide the broad sweeps of what you want them to believe and let their overactive imagination come up with the image of what they want to believe._

_What he told Wally wasn't precisely a lie—he really had detected trace amounts of zeta radiation and the mildly radioactive byproducts exposure to great intensities of said radiation tended to produce—but he sincerely doubted this would amount to anything. But he had to do something to bring up morale; the two of them were looking to spiral down into self-destructive behavior already, and the situation was already looking completely and utterly hopeless. The look of utter joy on Wally's face when he mentions the zeta radiation seals the deal. This was his brother-in-arms—he couldn't crush his hopes like that, even if it was only until they'd fully deconstructed how the alien tech worked._

_The utter, crushing despair that overtakes him when they find there is no possibility of rescuing anyone at all makes him regret it for a moment._

_Wally is little better than a puppet after that, and even more so after Conner disappears. Robin orders him to help home in on the bio-ship's transponder, and he obeys. Robin then orders him to help construct a scaffolding to hold up the rubble so that they can get the bio-ship out without having to worry about merely burying themselves further, and he obeys. Robin also orders him to pack the essentials so they can go on their cross-country road-trip, this crazy last-minute, last-ditch scheme to build up support for a crazy last-minute, last-ditch assault on the mothership squatting on the remains of Smallville, and he obeys._

_Robin tries, again and again, to get his friend to cheer up, because frankly, every time he looks at Wally, staring quietly off into the distance, speaking only when spoken to, moving only when asked to do something, he finds it harder and harder to put on a brave face for everyone._

_Wally, for his part, does start acting a little more normally as the weeks go by, although his gloom has been replaced with a suicidal determination to end every last alien ship they come across. Robin never lets him pilot, of course, but even in the gunner's chair he has a tendency to shoot first and consider the consequences of drawing every last alien ship in the vicinity to their position later._

_Needless to say, Robin is the one to handle the diplomatic interactions between them and the rapidly dwindling, ragtag military outfits still capable of aiding them. There are only a few; most of the others have been annihilated, but their potential to contribute is enormous. Robin tries not to remember that their role, except for a few elite, is mostly going to be along the lines of cannon fodder. This plan is shot to hell when they swing back to visit the groups in the Appalachians, and find they've been eliminated to the man._

_Time and time again, Robin tries to discern a rhyme or reason to the alien attack. They had targeted the United States first and Russia second. The superheroes of the Justice League, most operating primarily in the American theater, had been the first target, then the Cheyenne mountain complex and NORAD. They'd bombarded the Midwest and every last nuclear missile silo to so much glass and dust, then proceeded to do the same with the Russians. China had managed to launch a handful of nukes at the mothership as soon as it landed, but had every major population center hit in response—not __levelled__, mind, but just attacked—and its own silos destroyed. Europe hadn't fared much better, with every major industrial center and agricultural region destroyed inside of the second week._

_So the invaders had a working knowledge of Earth infrastructure and relative military strength. Their forces were relatively low in number, based off of the number of fronts they had advanced on during the initial attack. Whatever their armor was made of, it was vulnerable only to weapons on the higher end of the destructive scale, stuff like LexCorp's experimental particle cannons or a direct hit from a SAM. They didn't have any EMP hardening, seeing as two or three of the Chinese nukes had gone off in the upper atmosphere, shutting down virtually every attacking ship in North America, the mothership surviving presumably only because of its grounded hull acting as a Faraday cage. The mothership itself had been able to shoot down the remaining nukes before they hit, but only after they entered the lower atmosphere, so at least they had a maximum range to work with there. Oddly enough, the alien invaders don't seem to have any orbital assets, but Robin doesn't question that small blessing._

_So as far as he can figure, the situation is virtually hopeless. He can only guess at the aliens' objectives, but assuming that they include the destruction of humanity, they are well on their way to victory. Every last scrap of infrastructure is destroyed. The major food-producing centers of the world have been burned away. Famine and plague are rampaging unchecked through the world. Every military in the world has been scattered and their most effective weapons have been either spent or destroyed. The one option available to them that might, the operative term being "might", ensure humanity's survival is to mount a one-way trip into the mothership, which was already a suicide mission even with military aid, and likely impossible without them._

_Robin isn't so willing to throw away their lives just yet, so they keep leapfrogging around, trying to enforce a semblance of organization among their allies, until it all goes horribly wrong._

_Robin hears through the usual channels that the commander of the group they've—well, he's—termed Sierra 7, based out of the Denver suburbs, was killed recently. Support from them was extremely tenuous, given only because the commander and a few of her top officers insisted on aiding them over the grumblings of her soldiers. Now that she's dead, Robin needs to intervene before the entire thing collapses. Sierra 7, after all, is the remains of a tank battalion, and therefore one of the few groups that can actually function as more than a set of targets on a shooting range._

_They land a few kilometers away from Sierra 7's last known location, just in case they were tailed. It won't stop a foe determined to hunt them down, and their alien enemy is nothing if not determined, but at worst it gives them a few minutes to get away._

_The two trek through the wasteland, ducking between copses and the creaking, rotting remains of townhouses. In retrospect, Robin thinks, their usual sneaky approach may have been a mistake._

_A crackle of machine-gun fire stiches holes through the car he's huddled behind, and Robin ducks and vanishes back into the parking structure they'd been in just a second ago. Wally is leaning against a support column, knees to his chest, quiet as usual. Robin all but hauls him out as they make their way to a more secure position. He thinks better of it a moment later, and orders Wally to run out and scout ahead briefly. Wally stands and vanishes in a burst of speed._

_Robin makes his way back out to the car, digging around in his pockets for something to use as a flag of surrender. Wally zips back a moment later, crouching next to him._

_Before he can make his report, he glances aside, eyes widening. __He snatches Robin up__b__y the collar and pulls, but there's a whistle and a booming crack, then a concussive blast that hurls them aside. Robin's head rings, and his thoughts run slowly. He's vaguely aware of the sudden cold, and the feel of wetness trailing down his right leg, and of the yellow and red of Wally's costume fading into grey._

_Then he's aware of nothing more._

They curl up into themselves further and further, remembering what they know of themselves and of the others, ramming hastily-made mental barricades in place only to have them shatter. The intruding sense of unreality closes in on them, imposing itself upon them, forcing them to believe what they know isn't true, can't be true, the contradiction cracking at their sanity again and again.

Whoever is attacking them psychically thinks to invoke their fears, trying to weaken their resolve, but the six of them huddle closer against the onslaught. The attacker strikes them with storms and fires, lightning and earthquakes and floods, buries them alive and hurls them into the shivering void of space, but they dismiss the feeble attempts. Subtler tactics are tried, flashes of previous lives rendered meaningless by their deaths, of friends and family and regrets, but those are brushed off as well.

The attacker retreats again, this time seemingly for good. They relax after a wait, allowing their minds to drift away into the ether.

The final blow comes suddenly and sharply, and before they can shield themselves they find themselves at the bottom of an ocean, the crushing weight of kilometers upon kilometers of water smashing down on them, forcing its way into their lungs. They kick out and up in a blind panic, their surroundings pitch-black, until the faintest glimmer of sunlight above them draws them near.

Their heads break the surface.

_Artemis is very good at surviving. She's had to be, what with her dear old asshole of a dad dumping her out in some random wilderness twice a year every year for six years to drag herself back home. She knows how to hunt all types of game, with bow and arrow and lacking that nothing more than what she can fashion with her bare hands from twigs and twine. She knows how to set a broken bone and splint it so that she maintains maximum mobility, how to keep a laceration from going gangrenous, how to survive even when half-crippled. She knows the makes and models of a hundred different firearms, and how to keep them functional even under the worst conditions. She knows how to navigate by sun and star and the positions of the moon._

_So, when she slips out from Mount Justice early one morning and heads due southeast, she's probably the one person on the team who could've thrived in the chaos the world presently dissolves into._

_And oh, what a chaos. The entire Eastern seaboard is in a mass panic, burning and looting and worse tempered only by the alien ships casually targeting people on the street. The rest of the United States is hardly in any better shape. She hears rumors that Europe and Asia are faring better—at least the governments are still intact—but that's none of her concern when alien ships are sinking anything larger than a dinghy and blowing every last aircraft out of the sky._

_Her first and only mission, as far as she's concerned, is to not die. Anything else is accessory._

_To this end, she hides away from society, disappearing deep into the forests. On the rare occasions she comes across someone else, usually hunters who got the same idea as she did, she simply vanishes and moves on, never leaving behind a trace to be followed. Some of them inevitably die, and she pilfers their supplies before moving on._

_She zigzags like this, touching only the very edges of human civilization, swimming the Mississippi and trekking over endless miles of what used to be verdant farmland. She loses count of the days somewhere along the way, not that they really matter anymore. No more schedules to keep, no more deadlines to meet, it's just her and wherever she deigns to go._

_It's not that she doesn't appreciate the occasional human contact, though._

_She discovers the first of the hidden human settlements as she treks south along the foothills of the Rockies, trying to remember exactly where that mountain pass was. They're not exactly a welcoming bunch, but she doesn't blame them. Who would be, given that she's had to beat down no fewer than three groups of bandits over the past week, who thought that the poor, frail little blonde girl, travelling all alone in the "big scawwy world" would be an easy mark._

_She's willing to bet that they've been terrorizing these people, too, given the way they react to the sight of the cloak and dagger she's taken from one of the jerks who attacked her. After a lot of fast talking, she manages to convince them that no, she wasn't with the bandits, who yes, had been coming in and taking whatever food and clean water they had for the past few weeks, and could they put the guns down now please and thank you?_

_They're not stupid, of course, and they allow her to shelter with them—and not be perforated by bullets on the spot—only if she agrees to help defend them for a time. And of course, the clever jerks take the one thing of value she has as collateral._

_She has to remind herself to stop the reflexive jerk of her hand towards her pocket. A photo used to be there, one of the entire team, happy and smiling with the exception of her and Wally. The redhead had been in a headlock, with her doing her best to strangle him and him shouting angrily back up at her._

_She shoves the memories aside. Daydreaming is just going to get her killed when she's trying to spot the arrival of a band of raiders who like to dress all in black, attack on overcast to moonless nights—like this one—and who occasionally like to take captives of roughly her age and gender._

_Her hand tightens around the hilt of her knife. Something moves in the darkness._

_She closes her eyes, pitching her head from side to side as the sound of rustling grass hits her ears. There it is again, a second later, and again. At least five of them, approaching in a loose arrowhead formation, she guesses, armament unknown, capabilities unknown. This could be a death-trap for all she knows._

_She vanishes silently into the night._

_The point man is big and bulky and probably really tough. She never does find out, since two shots from her crossbow put__s__ two bolts through his kneecaps, and another two disable his hands. She scurries away to another position as the men immediately form up around their fallen comrade. The crossbow goes click-click again, and two more bolts—these ones blunt-tipped—hit their target. One takes out the man's eye, the other hitting him in the forehead and dropping him, knocked clean out._

_Now there are three._

_The men begin firing wildly in all directions, forcing Artemis to her belly as shots soar centimeters overhead. Two of the remaining men keep up the barrage while the third checks on the others. Soon enough, he's figured out roughly where the shots are coming from, and the bullets start getting uncomfortably close._

_Artemis throws caution to the wind and unloads her entire clip of bolts in their general direction. At least one hits, judging from the cry of pain that rings out into the night, and she takes advantage of the momentary cessation in gunfire to move, diving into the cover of the nearby forest._

_From there, it's a few short moments of hand-to-hand combat. The men are stupid enough to trail after the noise of her crashing through the brush and dumber still to open fire once or twice, hitting nothing but air. Their muzzle flash gives them away, and all she has to do is sneak up and slice open a few select tendon groups._

_Of course the assholes who took her photo also have to be jerks enough to not help her drag the men back into their settlement. They want her to stay for another few days, of course, but she's had enough of this crap, and she waits only long enough for her to take back her property and a few articles of clothing off of the raiders._

_Regardless of how dickish they were, though, she remembers just how good it felt to be actually doing some good again._

_She runs into a few more settlements along the way, all with their own host of problems. One is nothing more than a den of thieves and murderers, and she clears it out pretty decently and delivers some of their, ahem, property to another nearby settlement that had been suffering raids recently. Another has a water shortage, and she helps them construct a well. Yet another is barely functioning, more a bunch of loosely affiliated families that constantly war for the best scraps they can salvage._

_That one she abandons. She isn't exactly versed well enough in functioning systems of governance to help there._

_But everywhere else she goes, she does her best to help._

_And then she meets Wally._

_He's merely another face in the crowd at first, some jerk taking one of the few possessions that an old man has, an old, battered Army-issue canteen. All she catches sight of is a flash of red hair, bright even under the grime, but then he turns and she nearly trips over herself from the shock. The lines of his face are deeper, his cheeks sallow, his eyes dim, the freckles gone__, taller and broader__, but that is unmistakably him._

_She rushes to catch up, and her mind sparks with something she hasn't felt for a while. It takes her a moment to pin down, but she manages to put a name to it._

_Hope._

_After her initial euphoria of having found one of her friends alive and well as worn off, her pragmatic side kicks in, demanding that she take stock of the situation. Item one: Wally stole from an innocent, and so needs to be punished and the property returned. Item two: she needs to tie down Wally for long enough for her to convince him to help her save the world._

_Items one and two are checked off as Artemis finishes the last knot securing a thoroughly concussed Wally to a tree._

_Item three: she actually needs a plan for them to save the world._

_Well, crap._

_She manages to cobble the framework __together__ from a dozen old daydreams. Expectedly, Wally, tells her that it, and by extension, she, is stupid. This escalates into a shouting match ending only when she smacks him around and reminds him of exactly why he became a hero, i.e. the whole "defend-those-who-cannot-defend-themselves" shtick. It helps that halfway through their argument she ends up using her shiny repossessed combat knife for emphasis._

_Of course, the next day, as they're trekking over to where Wally said he'd left the bio-ship, he reminds her about how they don't have a single shred of actual data on the mothership she plans on attacking._

_To his credit, it's actually a pretty good point._

_They eventually decide to do a quick, Mach 3 flyby of the mothership to pick up what __intel__ they can. It goes off without a hitch, although shaking the roughly every damn ship that comes after them is a little bit more of an issue. It's agreed that though both of them absolutely suck at making up plans in general, Wally's, by dint of not being Artemis's, are less suicidal._

_When it comes to survival, he runs down smaller game and delivers them to her for the actual slaughtering and dressing—he still gets queasy at the sight of blood, the pansy. It makes hunting the larger stuff that__Wally actually needs to not starve to death, like elk and the occasional grizzly that wanders into camp, slightly more difficult, but she soon finds that just having him run her up to them so she can put them down with a shot to the head works. When he inevitably wears through his shoes, she stitches up a set of moccasins for him. _

_Weeks go by like this, with her spending what spare time they have making sure that he picks up everything she knows about how to survive in the wilderness. And then she's off, infiltrating one of the great underground empires in the South._

_She finds herself missing his company more than she cares to admit, as she steadily rises up the ranks by dint of her combat skills and ruthlessness. It's a dozen little things that she puts down to habit, like not having to prepare enough food to feed a small platoon on a regular basis, or the feel of the wind in her hair, but they all add up. More than once she finds his name on the tip of her tongue, and she's never been more relieved to see him than when he picks her up at the end of three weeks, ammunition and weaponry galore in her possession._

_It's after the second such raid that she finds that he's becoming a little softer towards her. It's small things at first, the tone of his voice becoming less and less gruff during one of their arguments, his admitting for once that he was wrong after they wind up somewhere over northern Canada rather than in Iceland like they were planning. She swears that he starts eating less, leaving more for her, and on their watches he lets her sleep in a little more._

_She can't exactly speak for him, although she doubts he'd have anything to do with her if they weren't the last. For her part, she knows she's doomed when she finds herself giggling at one of his absolutely absurd jokes, something about Captain Boomerang and the Trickster and a bar. It's not that she hasn't been trying, reminding herself constantly about how well it turned out the last time she let herself become infatuated with him. She still hasn't quite managed to get rid of the pang she f__elt__ every time he flirt__ed__ with M'gann._

_She reflects some months later, as snow is blanketing the bio-ship, Wally's arm warm around her waist, that maybe it isn't so bad a fantasy to have._

_She dies convinced._

The six of them draw breath and wake. Memories slot back into place—their mutual agreement to undergo the training exercise, the knowledge that, yes, the Martian Manhunter and the Batman were standing before them, alive, Mount Justice whole and intact around them. M'gann is the first to sit up, patting herself down, making sure that she's still in one piece, that life still pulses through her. Robin follows suit, although his movements are controlled, a hand moving to touch his thigh before he pushes himself upright. Conner rolls himself off of the low beds they've been lying down on and drops to hands and knees, unsteadily attempting to stand. Kaldur merely opens his eyes and stays where he is. Artemis stumbles upright, attempting a few steps before collapsing against the Batman. Wally gasps, once, and twice, and a third time, before levering himself upright, bile rising in his throat.

One look at Artemis, alive and breathing and whole and alive, and he can't hold it back anymore. He sprints to the restrooms, then to the top of Mount Justice. He can't stand the sight of them right now.

Artemis is the one to approach him later, as the stars slowly start flickering in the sky. He almost turns to face her as the smell of hot herbal tea and cooked meat of some description hits his nose.

"Hey, Wally," she says, her voice low and husky and so damn familiar that he can tell just from the lilt she puts in his name that she's worried about him and trying to hide it. "You've been up here for hours."

She pauses briefly, waiting for the inevitable dry sarcasm, along the lines of "Oh gee, it's been pitch-black up here for a while now, I hadn't noticed," but he doesn't say anything.

"They're all worried about you, Wally," she says, sitting down next to him. The plate she's holding gets nudged in front of him. "Your uncle's down there, he's almost ready to come up here himself."

"Then let him," Wally says. "Thanks for the food."

"No problem." She takes a sip from her mug as Wally pokes half-heartedly at the reheated remains of what looked to be a slab of ribs slathered in some unidentifiable sauce. It was probably the ones they'd bought the other day after M'gann had attempted to cook a pot roast and forgotten to set a timer. "Manhunter says that we were all so convinced of the reality of our deaths that he couldn't pull us out. He tried, multiple times when we were in the sim, but there was too much of a risk of driving us insane."

Wally is silent. She sips from her mug.

"So he had to wait until all of us were dead, or thought we were dead," she continues, "before he could try it. Problem was, we were all in comas, so the closer we got to waking up, the more we resisted, so in the end he just went for it and yanked us out by brute force. Luckily for all of us, it worked."

Wally is silent. She sips from her mug.

"Now what's bothering you?"

"What's bothering you?" he retorts quietly.

"You." She takes another sip.

"Oh, so very mature of you, Arty," Wally drawls.

"I'm being serious," she says. "Wally, look, none of it was real. I'm alive, you're alive, the rest of the team is alive, all our mentors are alive, there's no alien invasion going on, we're all fine, the world's all hunky-dory."

The only response she gets is the whistling of the wind as it blows past them.

She sighs and resorts to drastic measures.

"Ow!" Wally exclaims as she jabs him in the side.

"Eat," she orders. "I'm not having you malnourished, Wally."

"I'm not hungry, Artemis," he says. "Ow! Will you—ow!—cut that out?"

"Not until you eat."

"Fine," he says, proceeding to devour the entire plate somewhat messily in less than a minute. "Happy now?"

"Almost," she says. She pries him from his fetal position and curls up into him, her back against his chest. The top of her head bumps into his chin. "I'd forgotten how short you were," she says. She takes a sip from her cooling mug.

He twitches as a dozen memories of them in this exact same position, bundled up against the cold, flash through his mind.

Eventually the mug is emptied except for a few stray fragments of whatever vegetable matter Artemis used to brew the stuff, and set aside. The two lapse into a comfortable silence, watching the moon crawl along the sky.

There is a loud buzzing, and Artemis fumbles her phone from her pocket.

"Hi, Mom," she says. "No, I didn't know what time it was. Yeah, I'll probably be heading back tonight. Mom, I've walked that way a hundred times, I'll be fine. Yes, Mom. Yes, Mom. Okay, bye, Mom, I love you too. Bye Mom."

Artemis sighs and snaps her phone shut before getting up, groaning a little as stiffened muscles complain from the effort.

"You're going home?" Wally asks, gathering up the dishes.

"Yup. I'll be back here tomorrow, though," she says.

"Let me walk you back," he says.

"You don't need to, I'm a big girl and all," she almost says, but she catches sight of the look on his face and the protest dies in her throat. The edges of her smirk soften.

"Sure."

The walk to her apartment is as quiet as a night in the Gotham slums ever is, the shouts and occasional bursts of drunken laughter and the wailing of sirens muted by fog. Wally whistles lowly when he sees the complex.

"So this is home sweet home," he remarks. Artemis punches him in the shoulder.

"Better than a lot of places where I've been," she says.

"Because of the company or the surroundings?"

"Both." She untangles her hand from the death-grip he has on it. "Will you be there tomorrow?"

"We'll see," he says. "Probably, I spend most days there anyways, no need to alarm my folks."

"Why?"

"They're itchy enough about my normal extracurriculars." He shrugs slightly. "Can you imagine how'd they react to this whole mess?"

"Fair point." She kisses him lightly on the lips and makes to leave, but his hand is grasping hers before she can blink.

"How can you be so, so normal about this?" he asks, after Artemis looks rather pointedly at him. "The world burned, and we died, and you're acting like none of it happened at all."

She's quiet for a moment before she responds.

"But the world isn't burned, and we," she says, squeezing his hand gently, "are alive. So we gotta act the part, yeah?"

She smiles at him and tugs gently. He lets her go.

"Night, Arty," he says.

He watches her until she disappears into her room, clambering up the fire escape and slipping in through her bedroom window, then turns and walks off with a deliberate, step-by-step slowness that makes his every instinct scream at him. It's only until he's eight blocks away that he's able to run again, run all the way home faster than the eye can see.

And then he's on his front porch. He bites his lip and forces down the rush of memories that threaten to overwhelm him.

_Central City had been one of the first to be razed, oddly enough. It hadn't been the most populous, or the largest geographically speaking, or particularly strategically located. Hell, after Zatara and Flash had been killed, Wally doubted that there was a single person capable of threatening the alien ships left in the state. And yet they'd chosen Central City, not Gotham, not Metropolis or New York—_

—stop—

—_if it hadn't been for the smoking craters in the ground, he wouldn't have even known that there had been so much as a sod house here at one point—_

—no, damn it, stop—

—_and the bodies, the bodies and the fragments of bodies half-buried under the ash__—_

"Stop!" he screams, not realizing that he's done so until the front door slams open, and his mother and his father are there, wide-eyed and armed.

"Wally?" Mary West asks, handing off her cast-iron skillet to her husband. "Are you all right, dear?"

Wally pastes a smile on his face and bounds forwards and clings onto his mother before she can realize just how fake the expression is. "I'm fine, Mom," he says. "Just a little tired, they really pushed us in training today."

He tries not to break down until his mother has finished cooing over him and bustles him off to bed. But as he lies in bed, the feel of the sheets beneath him alien after so many nights spent sleeping against trees or the smooth, hard, ever-so-slightly warm surfaces of the bio-ship—no, none of that was ever real, none of it happened, damn it, remember that, remember that it wasn't real—he finds that he can't.

He spends most of the rest of his night trying to convince himself that he won't wake to find the world still burning.


End file.
